A Amazon Web Services (AWS) faced global instability in the early hours of this Monday (20), affecting various digital platforms and services around the world. The problem, which originated on a server in North America, caused a domino effect that impacted users globally.
Among the affected services were Facebook, Prime Video and the game Fortnite. Connected home devices such as smart lighting systems fail, demonstrating the reach and current dependence on cloud infrastructures.
How AWS works
AWS is a cloud computing platform that provides infrastructure for many companies globally. The service allows companies to hire server space to host their websites, applications and other digital services, without the need to maintain their own infrastructure.
Although Amazon has not released specific details about the causes of the instability, experts point out that the financial impact could be significant. Some companies using AWS had their services completely interrupted, while others only experienced occasional instabilities.
The is still being evaluated, especially considering that several e-commerce platforms were affected, resulting in possible sales losses. Some companies using backup solutions or parallel services were able to keep their operations partially active during the instability.
Understand the case
A major instability in Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing services platform offered by Amazon, took down a significant number of popular internet sites and services, affecting banks, airlines, media, delivery applications and many other sites and applications in the early hours of this Monday (20).
Some of those affected were the virtual assistant Alexa, the PicPay service and games like Fortnite and Roblox.
A “growing list of sites” were experiencing problems, Downdetector, which monitors internet outages, told CNN. The website said it has received around 6.5 million global reports related to the outage.
It’s unclear what caused the DNS (domain name system) outage, but it only lasted a few hours. At 8am (Brasília time), the company said in a statement that the instability had been resolved.
*With information from Nicoly Bastos, from CNN Brasil
